teaching writing

What does a day of homeschooling in our house look like? Every day is different. So I’ll share now and then about a recent day.

Today’s learning was driven by two things: Our writing club and getting ready for the county fair. While we generally work on math (high school geometry for my teens) daily, we did no math at all today. Since we school year-round, I don’t worry about skipping days here and there. I’d rather them miss a few days here and there than take a two-month vacation and come back having forgotten all they learned.

This year I started a writing club through our homeschool support group for kids old enough to write. Patterned after some writing groups for adult writers that I’ve attended, the students each bring a piece of writing and read it to the others and ask for critiques. The idea is to encourage the children to write something well enough that they won’t be embarrassed to read it to their peers. (Use that peer pressure for good, to encourage them to put forth their best effort.) In addition, they hopefully learn to listen to others and to give gentle, but helpful, advice and perhaps learn to improve their own writing in the process. Continue reading Teaching Toddlers Pre-Writing Skills